이별

It’s an alien feeling for her. And she couldn’t put a finger on how she felt. She couldn’t define her feelings. Or rather, her pride wouldn’t let her admit to the pain. So her sub consciousness acts like a battalion of army, protecting the sanity or the mind, keeping the pieces of her heart together.

Her subconscious shield is also the morphine, numbing her senses, rendering it dull. That is why there is no pain. There are no tears, there is no sadness. And yet her heart sags with a dull sense of emptiness.

Amazed at her own defense mechanism, she fell in love with songs of heartbreak and melancholy. Because the pain from the lyrics and the dripping grief from the music reminds her how human she is, although it is an emotion she has been so long deprived of, she is still capable of comprehending the depth of it.

So that is why, one morning on the way to class, earphones plugged and her playlist on shuffle, she started remembering. The music was merely beats to her ear. Besides the chord and melody, there was nothing else to it. The lyrics were drowned by the memories.

It was something similar to an oneiroid, exactly like the professor explained in Psychiatry class. The memories were arranged chronologically, as if by snapshots, one by one replaying in her mind. Between those flashes of memories, the pitch black darkness of Moscow Metro reminded her what reality was in comparison to the comfort of her thoughts.

It wasn’t comfort.

She wasn’t comforted by the thoughts and the memories of the times they spent together.

She didn’t feel regret. 

But there was a trace of resentment hiding somewhere behind the heavy drapes aligning her consciousness.

She just wondered why they kept coming back to her, these flashes of precious moments. It’s not something she wants to forget, but it’s also something she wants to see being projected in her mind. Not now. She wants it locked down inside, and then, somewhat later in life, she would want to caress them back in fond remembrance of her youth.

As she pondered on these thoughts alone with the accompaniment of Daniel Beddingfield’s If You’re Not the One, sitting crossed legged alone in the orange lit room, she thought to herself;

So this is how my heart breaks.

Memories are like colourful balloons.
But if these were my memories, I'd want to pop them one by one.
So that only the burst remnants remain.
Then I'd pick them up and lock them away.